A familiar motif permeates a host of 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire using his immense fortune to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a altruistic inventor's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a rich antagonist controlling a TV network that makes millions by taking advantage of and killing people suffering through desperate poverty, while employing digital impersonations and a powerful smear campaign to label them as greedy, lazy, scary criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while taking advantage of and mistreating Oz's most vulnerable population, driving them from their homes and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, pits the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit opulent gold-and-jade palaces in the sky. Remarkably, the zany farcical update *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a series of movies presupposing that the affluent have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled desire for greater riches. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the dawn of cinema, with early comedies contrasting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against fat cats, bosses, and inept, drunken millionaires. Starting with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed that very premise for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the whole legacy of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that wealth is at odds with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, for some reason, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Whenever lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by blaming graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people really were that easily influenced — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the societal mindset — undoubtedly American society would not continue to idolize billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans innately link affluence to smartness and value to society, even after a century of the world's most beloved movies promoting the opposite.
In fact, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has created a pressure release that impedes meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of predominantly happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These stories are like ethical parables, implying that the system works, and that plucky heroes will identify any corrupt individuals among the generally hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who pulled themselves up on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they indeed follow some contemporary patterns among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more targeted, and observably more lethal. It is seldom sufficient these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were killed by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the packed into a police car ending, perhaps because it’s become so clear that rich people function with different standards, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Rather, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
A few stories differ, undoubtedly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is redeemed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
